It is common practice in molecular biology laboratories to load the products of a nucleic acid amplification reaction, such as a polymerase chain reaction (PCR), directly into the wells of an electrophoresis gel in order to resolve the resulting DNA fragments. This is traditionally accomplished by pipetting the reaction mixture from the vial or tube in which the reaction was performed into the open well of the gel. Due to the enormous degree of amplification common in these types of reactions, a tiny fraction of the resulting amplification products can contaminate a subsequent amplification reaction such that the resulting nucleic acids will result from the contaminant and not the intended input sample. Loading amplification products into a gel and the subsequent handling of that gel represent likely sources of laboratory contamination.